Yiddish Papers Urge Democratization of Jewish Communities; Assail “assimilationists”

Democratization of Jewish communities and placing of welfare funds under democratic controls is demanded by the editors of two of the leading Yiddish newspapers in the country.

In an article bearing the title, “The Democratization of The Jewish Communities,” D.L. Meckler, editor of the Jewish Morning Journal, cautioned that “if control over the welfare funds remain centralized” we “will very soon have virtual dictatorship in American Jewish life, so that such a national movement as the Zionist movement will not be able to exist independently.” Should the centralization tendency remain unchecked, he warned, it “will not even be possible to come before these welfare funds with claims and lay before them the arguments, as would be the case under a system of democratized Jewish communities and democratically-controlled welfare funds.”

Writing in The Day, Mordecai Danzis, its editor, charged that Jewish life in America “is now controlled by assimilationist elements” who “head most of the Jewish institutions” and who are the “ringleaders in the welfare funds.” Because “the assimilationists are the ones who hold in their hands the key to our communal treasury” and because “they possess the powerful instrument called welfare funds,” they not only have “the power to do as they wish” but are sharpening their appetites “for even greater power in our communal life,” Mr. Danzis wrote.

He accused the leadership of the welfare funds of trampling “on every democratic principle” and of having transformed the welfare funds “into an inconsiderate machine, and a soul-less bureaucracy,” adding that the “leadership of the welfare funds lies in the hands of semi-or full assimilationists” with an aversion for the Jewish masses, the Yiddish language, Hebrew and Jewish education.

In a subsequent article Mr. Danzis draws the line more sharply, noting that the struggle is between the survivalists, “the Jews who wish to continue the golden thread of our old and new culture here on American soil,” and between the camp consisting of Jews “who stand on the road which leads to self-negation and spiritual dissolution.”

Noting that “there are people among those active in the welfare funds who think that the collection of millions for the upbuilding of the state of Israel is a superfluous thing,” the editor of The Day warns that “if our nationally-minded Jews will continue to leave the field open to the assimilationist camp, which has in the past two years begun to reach out for more and more communal territory and to expel more and more of the kind of Jews who wish to remain Jews, the existence of the Jewish collective in America will face a real danger.”